


Three workers were carrying crap out of the Holland basement and tossing it into the dumpster. Nothing was left inside the space where the bar was. And the workers didn't seem all that pleased that I was nosing around.
Broken Glass: Photographs of the South Bronx by Ray Mortenson
Nov. 14 through March 9
Made between 1982 and 1984, the photographs in Broken Glass: Photographs of the South Bronx by Ray Mortenson focus on the burned out, abandoned, and razed structures of entire city blocks in the South Bronx, documenting the aftermath of a widespread urban economic crisis that plagued the United States in the 1970s.
When the Rainbow Room first struck up the band in 1934, the Great Depression was in full swing. Bank closings and home foreclosures were rampant and unemployment rates soared. The Giants had won the NFL championship by spoiling a foe’s otherwise perfect season. A Harvard-educated lawyer from the Democratic party had recently wrestled the presidency from the Republican incumbent with a message of hope — and, in doing so, secured House and Senate majorities. And, by no coincidence, strong yet fancy cocktails were all the rage.
Sound familiar?
Duane Reade had their shit out in October.
Food Emporium had their stuff up the day after Halloween.
The holiday lights went up on 10th Street sometime this past week.
And 57th and Fifth?
Here’s one mistake that stressed out financial workers may want to avoid right now: Don’t get so drunk over the bear market that you dial up your broker and buy a luxury Manhattan condo on a boozy whim.
But Kipton Davis, a Prudential Douglas Elliman broker from Virginia, thinks a little bourbon could be good for sales.
Just as a few drinks may coax timid traders onto a dance floor, it could help them muster the courage to buy multimillion-dollar apartments.
That’s why on Wednesday night, Ms. Davis lured a half-dozen bankers, traders and friends on a condo tour of four TriBeCa buildings by offering wine and whiskey at every stop.
“Alcohol brings everyone together,” said Ms. Davis, after showing the group a $9.9 million penthouse at 16 Warren Street with an eight-seat hot tub. As the crowd debated whether they valued the hot tub over the layout of the $2.25 million unit downstairs, they sipped Chardonnay and a Chinon.
But they did not deliberate for long. There was tippling to be done. The pack headed to a $3.3 million bachelor loft at 132 Duane Street, where they were greeted by another Elliman broker, Francine Hunter McGivern, and a small spread.
“Have some food. Don’t be shy,” Ms. McGivern said.
They helped themselves to chicken satay and samosas and washed the snacks down with Sancerre wine, and Lagavulin ($77 a bottle) and Talisker ($60 a bottle) whiskeys. They sipped and listened while Ms. McGivern stressed that her client, a banker, did not need to sell. He will hold out for a buyer willing to pay for his meticulous renovation featuring Miele fixtures and wood floors imported from Austria. The crowd seemed pleased.
“The thing I dig is the bar across from the powder room,” said Patrick Nichols. Twenty-seven and newly married, Mr. Nichols, a trader with Jane Street Capital, scribbled in a leather-bound notebook and snapped photos. He is looking to spend $2 million to $3 million on a two- or three-bedroom apartment. He said he did not know many people hurt by the slowdown, and he was not worried about losing his job.
Also from 1933..."The Lung Block, Lower East Side, got its name from many cases of respiratory diseases."
Lopate: From my perspective, there’s been a healthy shift from seeing cities as basically dying to essentially buoyant, yet still requiring help.
Huxtable: We’ve seen a reversal. Years ago there was white flight to the suburbs, the inner cities were crime-ridden, there was a lot of poverty. We still have poverty, but people started moving back to the cities.
Lopate: There’s also been a shift in attitude regarding density.
Huxtable: Yes, urban renewal tried to get rid of density. It was viewed as concentrating poverty and disease. Now there’s the awareness that density is more energy-efficient and less destructive of the environment than urban sprawl.
Lopate: I take it you’re for density but not for overbuilding.
Huxtable: How can I be against density? I’m a New Yorker! I grew up with density. Still, in a way I’m glad for this downturn in the economy. Because so much bad stuff was being built. This will give us a chance to think, to take stock. I am so weary of these stupid alliances between developers and cultural institutions in which the cultural institution is given a block of space and the developers overbuild the rest and make an enormous profit.
The Museum of Modern Art has become a real estate operation. I admit a certain amount of nostalgia: I remember a street that was once one of the best streets in New York, 53rd Street. Watching it change over the years, I can’t help but view their new Nouvel tower as the last destructive nail.
There was community opposition to 8 applications.
The committee unconditionally denied 4 of these.
Under pressure from the committee, another 2 withdrew,
and the committee approved 2 (both transfers of existing licenses to new owners).
The 2 that were approved had only one resident speaking in opposition.
"[T]his morning, we received a cheerful note from developer Bruce Kaplan about his new condo building at First Street and First Avenue. He wondered if a Voice feature might be in the offing, seeing as how Kramer, in an episode of Seinfeld, once referred to "First and First" as the "nexus of the universe."
Yeah, that's clever, and a nice selling point, no doubt. But with Kaplan's one-bedroom condos going for about a million bucks each, we shot back a response: what sort of a feature was he looking for, with his building only adding to the difficulty the non-filthy-rich are having staying in the city?
Perhaps you might take a longer view.
From http://www.gvshp.org/history.htm, and as you probably know:
"between 1825 and 1840...shrewd speculators subdivided farms, leveled hills, rerouted Minetta Brook, and undertook landfill projects. Blocks of neat rowhouses built in the prevailing Federal style soon accommodated middle-class merchants and tradesmen. From 1820 a more affluent residential development emerged to the east near Broadway."
So without the actions of those shrewd speculators, there would not have been the canvas to paint on what would become the Village. Presumably the Minetta Brook Voice mourned that transformation.
As one of the Village's more famous residents wrote:
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
If one looks back over time, there are several theorists (Ricardo, Mills, Alonso's Urban Land Theory) whose theories are that rising prices increases, not decreases supply. See also, http://www.chpcny.org/default.html
In any event, for what it's worth, what this shrewd speculator hopes to do with his million bucks is create affordable rental housing in the outer boroughs and preserve that diversity you value.
Eight holdout tenants who fought for five years to keep their millionaire landlord from turning their Lower East Side tenement into a mansion for himself agreed to be bought out yesterday.
The last rent-stabilized tenants of 47 E. Third St. said they gave in because they weren't confident they would beat real-estate baron Alistair Economakis in the Manhattan Supreme Court trial scheduled to begin yesterday.
Economakis, the son of a Greek shipping magnate, bought the six-story building for $900,000 in 2003 and said he needed it as a home for himself, his wife and two children.
He reached deals with seven of the 15 tenants but the others fought until yesterday.
The tenants will each receive $75,000 under the settlement, except for one elderly resident, who will get $175,000.